2-modified characteristic Fredholm determinants, Hill's method, and the periodic Evans function of Gardner (Q692845)

From the introduction: The purpose of this note is to give an explicit connection between two objects related to the spectra of periodic-coefficient operators on the line, namely, a Birman-Schwinger-type characteristic Fredholm determinant \(D(\lambda)\) and the Jost function-type periodic Evans function \(E(\lambda)\) of Gardner. Both of these objects are analytic functions whose zeros have been shown in various contexts to agree in location and multiplicity with the eigenvalues of the associated operator. Thus, on the mutual domain for which these properties have been established, it follows that they must agree up to a nonvanishing analytic factor. Here, we determine explicitly this nonvanishing factor, thus illuminating the relation between the two functions while extending the key property of agreement with eigenvalues to the union of the domains on which it has been established for each function separately.